


So many words

by Sherctorrunning23



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Declarations Of Love, John Watson - Freeform, John and Sherlock - Freeform, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Reichenbach, Sherlock Holmes - Freeform, Sherlock back from the dead, Sherlock faking his own death, The Reichenbach Fall, nice ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 08:18:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15138986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sherctorrunning23/pseuds/Sherctorrunning23
Summary: You are my life, my world, and my future.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment and leave kudos! 
> 
>  
> 
> Some descriptions of blood circa. the Fall.

There were so many words he wanted to say.

 _You were there for me when no one else was._ That was a big one: Sherlock had turned up, materialized out of the blue, at a time when John was completely alone and afraid. From the moment he had burst into his life, Sherlock Holmes had been there for John Watson, and he wanted to tell him how grateful he was for that.

 _You saved me from myself._ If there’s one thing that John knows for sure, it’s that he has no idea would have happened if he hadn’t met Sherlock. There was a short answer – one word, seven letters, the most abhorrent and tragic word in the English language – but he didn’t even want to think about that. Not now. Not now-

 _I will never meet anyone like you again._ Sherlock is unique. John is certain of that. But Sherlock is not just unique in the child-like way a mother tells her child that he is unique: Sherlock is actually unique, a one-of-a-kind who has and will never be seen a second time. His way of thinking is unique, his way of talking is unique, the way he reads and reacts to situations is unique, and John adores that about him.

 _You mean more to me than anything._ Sherlock became ‘that’ person for him almost immediately, even if he’s refused to accept it until right now, at the last possible moment, at the _worst_ possible moment he could have chosen. John would die for Sherlock again and again and again; he would endure eternity in hell for Sherlock; he would do anything and everything in his power to keep that man, that wonderful, brilliant, beautiful man safe.

 _You are my life, my world, and my future._ His life without Sherlock is a life without living: his life without Sherlock is, in a word, non-existent. He cannot comprehend moving forwards without Sherlock by his side, of living and breathing and existing without him. For John Watson, there is no life, no world and therefore no future without Sherlock Holmes: he cannot, _will not_ , be able to live without him.

And, of course, the three most important words in the human language. Three words; eight letters; two pronouns and a verb. 

_I love you._

But not in the way everyone thinks he loves Sherlock. Not the platonic love that one feels for a friend; not the familial love that one would feel for someone who had become a brother or sister, the love that John felt for Mike Stamford or Greg Lestrade.

No. John Watson loved Sherlock Holmes in the way that one loves a soulmate, the way that one loves the person who has become your life, your world, your future, the way that one loves the person who means more to them than anything, the person who is there for you no matter what, that one person who you know, deep in your heart, can never be replaced.

John Watson was in love with Sherlock Holmes, and he wanted to tell him so badly that he wanted to scream, scream through the crowd of people gathered around the outside of the hospital, scream until his throat was hoarse and his lungs gave up. He wanted to tell Sherlock so badly that he dropped the phone ( _just as Sherlock dropped from the top of that building,_ his brain whispered). He wanted to tell Sherlock he loved him so badly that he ran, sprinted, from where he was standing to join the crowd of people, legs aching as he hammered his way through the crowd, saying the same thing over and over ( _‘He’s my friend, he’s my friend, let me through’_ ) even though it’s not what he wants to say, not at all. Even as he collapses onto two knees next to the jumbled mess of blood and coat and thick, curly hair he is still saying it, over and over, in his brain and body and blood, the words in time with the frantic beat of his heart.

_I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you._

Finally, as a woman wraps her arm around his shoulders and bends down next to him, as his tears fall on the floor, mingling with the blood of his best friend, as his life implodes around him, John Watson chokes out the words he wanted to say most to his best friend, his flatmate, his detective, his world. ‘I love you,’ he manages, and then again and again, hands gripping Sherlock’s broken body, head against Sherlock’s still chest. ‘I love you, I love you, I love you-‘

And even as he says the words he always wanted to say, he knows it’s too late. Sherlock’s chest remains still, his body broken, his ears unhearing and his eyes – his beautiful eyes, that once held all the secrets of the universe alongside the sad little boy he was always trying to run from – open and unseeing.

John Watson is too late, and Sherlock will never know.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘I always hear you, John,’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, kids.

He hadn’t visited the grave for a while.

Now, it was summer. There were wildflowers everywhere, the type that Sherlock had loved (even if he pretended not to), and it occurred to John, as he stood with his hands behind his back in front of the gravestone with his best friend’s name on it, on the layer of earth that covered the black coffin, within which rested the decaying remains of his old life, that this was yet another thing that Sherlock would not live to see. He would never again smell the wildflowers at the height of summer; he wouldn’t scrounge the newspapers, lamenting the poor quality of Britain’s criminal classes; he wouldn’t hear what John had always wanted to say, but never had.

It didn’t stop John from trying, though. Every time he came back to Sherlock’s grave he would stand in front of it and repeat what he had said on the pavement outside St. Barts hospital, what he wished he’d said every day since they’d met, over four years ago.

‘I love you,’ John told the gravestone. ‘I love you, and I wish I’d been brave enough to tell you that before.’

Silence.

John put his hand on the gravestone and closed his eyes as the ache in his chest – the ache that had been ever-present since Sherlock jumped off the top of a hospital two years before – grew and grew and grew, until it hurt to think and breathe, and the crushing weight of regret brought John to his knees on Sherlock’s grave, choking back tears as he whispered to the stone and the wildflowers and the silence in the graveyard, ‘I wish you could hear me.’

‘Ah, Doctor Watson.’ The voice came from behind him, deep and smooth, a voice that haunted John’s days and nights, dreams and nightmares, a voice that he knew he could never hear again. He turned slightly, gripping the gravestone so tightly his hands went bright white from strain, and looked behind him, knowing there could be nothing there, knowing he had finally, _finally,_ snapped, knowing that he couldn’t be there-

Dark hair, last seen soaking in blood outside a hospital. Blue eyes, last seen cold and unseeing. A long coat, last seen draped over the dead body of the person he loved most in the world.  

‘I always hear you, John,’ Sherlock Holmes said, and then he smiled a smile that told John, after all this time, that his life was resuming, his world was turning, and his future had finally started.


End file.
